The Anti-Federalist Papers

Yeah, it's pretty weird.

We're not looking to the past for guidance. We're looking at what the Constitution says because it is still the supreme law of the land. People who think some provision of that supreme law of the land should be changed can propose amendments; the US Constitution has already been amended 27 times. But you're not supposed to just pretend that the law doesn't apply because you don't like what it says.

> All that was a long time ago and things have evolved.

And the US Constitution has been amended where necessary to take that into account. We amended the Constitution to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to have Senators elected by the people of their states instead of the legislatures, to eliminate poll taxes, to limit how many terms a President can serve. And we can continue to amend the Constitution where necessary to fix other issues. That is how people who want to take Justice Ginsburg's advice and take advantage of advances other countries have made should do that.

If the legislative branch wishes to amend The Constitution, there is a procedure for that, including a wholesale rewriting of it (Constitutional Convention). We've amended it via 27 amendments, substantially altering its structure.

And in practice, whatever anybody says, the interpretation of the Constitution has evolved massively over the country's history, even along supposedly originalist views. The most important ideas in the Constitution—say, the First Amendment—are intentionally under-specified; the full meaning of the First Amendment is not in its 45 words but in centuries of legal scholarship and judicial precedent. While the Amendment itself has a couple of centuries under its belt, its practical manifestation in American legal practice is at least as sophisticated and modern as anywhere else.

> It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

The reason why people look to the founding papers and value them is because they are breaking away from tyranny, greed, monarchy, almost mafia state like control. They have interesting takes that are true in any power grab and warnings.

You can't write a Constitution as good as when you just went through revolution from tyranny. That is what changing it like the push for a Convention of States is trying to do is a dangerous thing while so divided. We are in a state of uncivil war, not unity over an external enemy, though maybe we should be.

The United States has the longest running form of government, I'd say it was architected pretty well. The Constitution is a good guide for setting up a system that allows depressurization. Western liberalized democratic republics allow for depressurization and waves and cycles to flow, some intense, some wonderful, some problematic, but return or escape from those eras. Authoritarianism does not, eventually authoritarianism blows up when the loyalty and leverage break down, there is no pressure release.

Also note that people do not just write constitution to satisfy their ideal image of constitution, they need to write such constitution that would be accepted by many citizens with differing ideas and goals. Especially when it is not a constitution of a unitary state, but federation. Last time we tried something similar, we ended with Treaty of Lisbon.

As for non-Americans, I think those foundational principles, if not the constitution itself, should be valued just as much elsewhere as they are in America (in theory at least). Perhaps I have a too naively positive a view of the extent of liberal education in Europe and elsewhere.

As Christopher Hitchens said: "The American Revolution, the one that says, build your public on individual rights, not group rights, have a bill of rights that inscribes these and makes theme legible to everybody, separate the church from the state, separate the executive from the judicial, and the political branch. Do all these things; It doesn't sound like much but it's really a very revolutionary idea. There is hardly a country in the world that wouldn't benefit from adopting those principles. I think that gives the United States a really good claim to be a revolutionary country as well as of course, paradoxically a very conservative one."

Firstly, at least as read one way, the first assertion is highly debatable because the principles of limited government, the checking of abuses and preventing tyranny through a careful system of checks and balances, the independence of the judiciary, the inability of the majority to rule on certain things (the Bill of Rights), etc are all timeless ideas. Their codification in the Constitution was the result of much political philosophy, deliberation and debate. It was also informed by history.

The Framers understood that 1) they had no guarantee that future people would be as wise and virtuous as they considered themselves to be and 2) democracy, while preferable to other systems of government, carries with it the risk of mob rule or tyranny of the majority. As a result, they drafted a written Constitution which, if ratified by the states, would serve as the legally binding document which prescribes exactly the manner in which the government encounters the individual. The rules set forth the structure of the government, how power is distributed among the various branches and how those powers are checked in order to maintain the primacy of the individual.

To put it simply: given that

a) the Framers thought very deeply about all the problems associated with this system of government and the best ways to resolve or minimize those problems

and given that

b) they had no way of knowing if people in the future would be as cautious, careful and diligent as they were in their thinking

and given that

c) mistakes and poor thinking in these matters tends to disfavor the individual whose rights they sought to protect

that therefore amending the Constitution should be very difficult and it should require an incredibly high level of agreement and consensus that can only be achieved through an abundance of deliberation, argumentation, etc. In other words, the system they designed which was so carefully considered should not be easy to change. The system simply isn't durable if in order for it to work, we must have faith that every generation which might come to adjust the system is at least as virtuous as the one which ratified the Constitution. On the other hand, the Framers were not so presumptuous as to think that they could have anticipated the needs of all future generations so it simply had to be possible to amend the Constitution under some circumstances. The high bar for ratification offers some protection against the risk that by bending to the passing political whims of every generation we bring about the disintegration of the system.

Put another way: the protective nature of the Constitution -- against government infringing on individual liberties, on the government devolving into tyranny, etc -- is inversely correlated with how flexible the system is.

_We_ might consider _our_ amendment aspirations to be good and virtuous and well-intentioned, but the power to amend does not go away when a new group of people who are less well-intentioned arises. Hence, the great difficulty of amending the Constitution hampers the bad actors, even if by so doing it also impedes "progress" sought by good people.

RBG doesn't seem to understand this or, at the very least, her comments quoted here reflect a lack of appreciation for this aspect of the system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

So, things have evolved, but not all of that evolution was positive. And one has to look at both the US Constitution and the Canadian CR&F to compare and contrast. You can't automatically assume that newer is better in all respects.

My short review of the book would read;

"It is not just an excellent display of political knowledge, nor just an astute vision of governance, but mostly an acknowledgement and exposé on human nature. "

I am from Australia and wish we taught it in schools also.

I didn't know there were Anti-Federalist Papers so time to buy some more wine and get going.

Note: Ben Shapiro does a nice video on what the Federalist Papers are about.

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It was one of the harder reads I've done such that it almost feels like a life accomplishment.

I'd personally recommend just googling the top 5-10, choosing some that you like and just listening to the audio book versions e.g. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PiSeeJQkrQ

I always prefer reading myself but in this case my comprehension was slightly better just listening to some of the essays.

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“It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.” - Hamilton

But there is no "supposed to be taught" -- anyone who knows American history knows that, for federal reasons, educational curricula are set at state or even local levels. Your school district appears to be highly unusual... and I'm pretty amazed at the concept of teaching this in middle school. May I ask where you went, out of both curiosity and envy? ;)

The relevant Wikipedia article even states:

> ...the essays they wrote have largely fallen into obscurity. Unlike, for example, The Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison, none of their works are mainstays in college curricula or court rulings. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Federalist_Papers

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I had any appreciation for the human side of it all and how it was so much more than things that happened before I was born.

So, to be fair, it’s entirely possible this was part of our education and I just reserved zero synapses to its retention.

Or, consider a future where some combination of Texas/Georgia/Arizona do what Colorado and Virginia did over the last decade, complete their urbanization and turn hard blue. In that world, we'd be looking at a very large democratic advantage in the EC.

Yeah, it's gotta be fixed. It just doesn't correspond well to the kind of population dynamics we have in the modern US. Nothing in the original constitution expected a country where both Wyoming and California could be a single "state". Call your reps and ask for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

> Is it then become necessary, that a free people should first resign their right of suffrage into other hands besides their own, and then, secondly, that they to whom they resign it should be compelled to choose men, whose persons, characters, manners, or principles they know nothing of?

We no longer have a system where you vote for an elector who decides which presidential candidate to vote for. The electors in the electoral college execute a formality, they don't make decisions. The issues around electoral college vs. popular vote are not addressed in this paper.

"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America3; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."

"But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy."

Hamilton wrote it about the one-state-one-vote arrangement under the Articles of Confederation, of course. But the arguments themselves are clearly very much applicable to the current situation in the Senate and EC.

I'm trying to justify purchasing The Complete Anti-Federalist by Herbert J. Storing on Google bookstore which costs $340. Seems pretty steep, however it looks like its the most authoritative source on the anti-federalist papers.

The US system though will never change as long as it's the global hegemon. Much like the British Empire, Roman Empire, Qi Dynasty, and Holy Roman Empire; these major players never ended up reforming until their total collapse. As much as anybody hates to see it, that is the only way for this system to be revised. There is a big pie for many to take a piece of in the US. It's why there are minimal united for change.

For example, he asserts that the 3 branches were intended to make the country less of a democracy.

Yes, the goal was a republic instead of a democracy because (as spelled out in the Federalist papers) pure democracies always wind up persecuting minorities (2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for dinner) and all historical democracies up to that point fell apart rather quickly. Limiting the power of any one person or cabal was of prime importance.

Beard rejects all these reasons as essentially true, but made up excuses (though history is not on his side). Instead, he claims it was to protect them from being overthrown by the masses.

He asserts that the constitution was an economic document. Of course this is true. It was trying to convince 13 countries to become one, unified country. It tried to guarantee it wouldn't interfere with things in the Bill of Rights. Once the constitution has established that it can't butt into people's moral business, all that is left is economics. They set down rules to keep one state from oppressing another, rules for foreign commerce, and left internal issues to the states. Beard doesn't say how the rules could be better, he just asserts that because most of the writers had money, they must have had nefarious reasons for establishing those rules.

Here's another example. The constitution says the US should pay it's debts. Beard asserts this is because Washington loaned money and wanted it back. Sure, this could be true, but it is also true that small, new countries guaranteeing to pay back money to lenders is paramount to securing loans in the first place.

Realty were his creation that was anyone without large amounts of liquid assets (this included land owners). Personalty were people with liquid assets and manufacturing power. He claims the realty were entirely suppressed by the personalty during the constitution's creation. He doesn't provide much hard evidence aside from very generic things like he thinks it was hard to collect farmer's votes or opinion pieces in various newspapers that were anti-federalist.

The federalists asserted that if the states didn't unite, they would slowly devolve into a bunch of little, squabbling countries that would be played against each other or outright conquered by the European powers. He has no answer.

He claimed repression of the realty, but many of the county's most famous people rose from nothing. In fact, the upward mobility of the US has exceeded every other country since it's inception. This contradicts his claim, yet he has no answer.

I would go so far as to say that he fails to justify any of his smears and that history both before and after 1913 has not been on his side.

I don’t have any annotated versions of the Federalist Papers I can recommend, but The Heritage Foundation has one of the better web annotations of the Constitution[1]. Scroll through and you’ll find various clauses accompanied with full essays in the little “i” icons.

What you may also find helpful is context for the why and the how of the Constitution, as in why did the Articles of Confederation need to be replaced and how did the Constitutional Convention decide to replace them and how they went about replacing them. National Review hosts Constitutionally Speaking[2], and the hosts of the show keep trying to bring it back in various ways but they finished with what they initially promised by the end of Episode 41.

[1] https://www.heritage.org/constitution/

[2] https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/constitutionally-spe...

The upside is that if you get used to reading texts from this era, other writers of the time period become more accessible as well. For example, I recently read many of the sermons of Jon Wesley and found them to be an easier read than I was expecting, perhaps due to my exposure to the federalist papers and others.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers